Mexico's Leader to Defend Trade Pact in U.S.

By MARK A. UHLIG, Special to The New York Times

Published: April 7, 1991

MEXICO CITY, April 6—
In an effort to rally political support for a proposed North American free-trade agreement, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is to make a campaign-style trip to the United States and Canada beginning Sunday.

The trip by Mr. Salinas, who will meet Sunday with President Bush in Houston before starting a week of meetings in seven Canadian and American cities, comes amid rising concern here about opposition to a free-trade accord in the United States Congress. The Mexican leadership has staked its political future on the benefits of closer economic ties with the United States.

Diplomats and political analysts say Mr. Salinas will seek to reassure business executives and officials in regions that have expressed concern about the potential efffect of the agreement. They say he will also try to press the Bush Administration's fight to conduct the treaty talks under so-called fast-track authority, which limits Congress's ability to revise the terms of a negotiated accord.

"The process is at a critical juncture right now," said Roderic A. Camp, an American expert on Mexican politics who teaches at the Central University of Iowa. "There are a lot of groups in the United States that are opposed to an agreement, and if it doesn't stay on the fast track, it's likely to have so many attachments to it that it would defeat the purpose."

Since Mr. Salinas reversed longstanding Mexican policy and accepted the idea of a free-trade agreement last year, Mexican and American officials have repeately expressed confidence that an accord would find quick acceptance in their legislatures.

That optimism was reinforced early this year, when Mexican, American and Canadian leaders agreed with little public discussion that Canada should join the talks in the hope of reaching a continent-wide agreement that would create the world's largest free-trade zone.

But recently, American unions, textile manufacturers, environmental groups and others who are opposed to the agreement have begun to mobilize for a major fight over the free-trade issue, arguing that open economic borders would cost thousands of American jobs and subject American business to a flood of inexpensive foreign competition.

Together with sympathetic congressmen, those opponents have focused their attacks on the fast-track mechanism, which expires on May 31, and must be renewed by Congress if it is to be used for approving the treaty. Mr. Bush formally requested such a renewal on March 1.

"It is no accident that the Bush Administration and its allies want the U.S.-Mexico free-trade agreement to be considered on the congressional fast track, a procedure that prohibits amendments and significantly limits debate," wrote Lane Kirkland, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., in a recent article opposing the treaty. "Otherwise, the people might learn the truth about this agreement, particularly its disastrous potential for workers on both sides of the border."

Today, more than 20 leading American, Canadian and Mexican environmental groups announced that they have joined forces to demand that detailed environmental regulations be made an explicit part of any trade pact.

Among the most urgent concerns, environmental leaders said, are the risks that Mexico's less stringent pollution laws would attract American and Canadian industries seeking to avoid controls at home. They also asserted that an accord could restrict anti-pollution efforts in the United States and Canada as being unfair barriers to trade.

In seeking to counter such attacks, Mexican officials say, Mr. Salinas will combine a state visit to Canada with a rapid swing through several American cities, starting in the Boston area, where he will give the keynote address April 10 at a conference of the American Society of Newspaper Editors at Harvard University. He will then continue on to Chicago, Austin, Tex., and San Antonio.

Mexican officials say that as the debate over the treaty heats up, Mr. Salinas and his Government intend to go all out to defend and explain it.